How to Play a 12-Bar Blues Scale on Guitar

Learn how to play a 12-bar blues scale on guitar in this Howcast video.

Transcript

So now that we know some open chords, let's go ahead and use that to play the 12-Bar Blues, right? Almost every single blues song goes the same way. If there were two variations, one could fast blue and one could be slow blues. So, we'll talk about the fast one now. So, here we go! I'm going to use E7, right? You remember that. And then A7, right? And then B7. I know B7's tricky but let's use that, we need that chord, right? So you have to practice that one, right? And now, let's use one of our strums. How about that first one? That first one was down, down, up, up, down - right? We can use that, that's fine. So what we're going to do is going to do E7 for four bars, or four measures or four of these strums: down, down, up, up, down. 2‚ 3‚ 4‚ So there's four bars, right? Now I'm going to move to A7 and we're going to do that for two bars or two measures, right? Down, down, up‚ So, now we're going to move back to E7 for another two, right? So, so far, pretty easy, right? Four E's, two A's, two E's. Now the last line's a little trickier - we're going to go to B7 - for one; then A7 - for one and then we're going to play E7 for two more times and that should fill out our 12. Right? So let's do that again. I'm going to do it all without stopping, right? So we got one‚ two‚ three‚ four, A7‚ one‚ two and back to E7‚ three‚ four - B7‚ one‚ A7 for one and then E7 for two. Right? And that can go on for ever and ever and ever. Not only is that the blues, that's a lot of early rock music that goes that way, so you've got a lot of ways to use the 12-Bar Blues. No problems.